CTA: Trump Tariffs Will Thump U.S. GDP

Marking the first day under new Chinese tariffs the Trump Administration has imposed, a ticked off Consumer Technology Association ticked off the reasons they are a bad idea.

The $50 billion in tariffs are meant to force China to lighten up on its own levies on U.S. goods.

In a blog post Thursday (July 5), CTA VP of international trade and government affairs Sage Chandler, said that if punishing China is the goal, the reality is U.S. consumers will be U.S. consumers who will be paying the price.

"A trade war based on increasing tariffs hurts the United States and China, and businesses and consumers," she writes. "A trade war doesn’t have winners." She said the tariffs will hit $15.2 billion worth of tech items including Chinese imports including lithium batteries, navigation devices, disk drives and circuit board components and, combined with expected retaliation, could mean a $3 billion annual hit on U.S. GDP.

Among CTA's big concerns are that the tariffs will put startups at a disadvantage because other nations can undercut them by importing Chinese goods without the extra cost, and that could discourage other potential innovators from starting up at all. "Tariffs are bad for everyone, but they especially hurt small businesses," she said. That is because most either can't switch their sourcing to the U.S. or another country or at least can't without major disruption.